If It Be Your Will by Leonard Cohen
IF IT BE YOUR WILL
Marie Bortolotto 2021
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
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Marie Bortolotto 2021 Classical Ghazal Music...poetry of the heart... ...enchanting bhajans, devotional songs... DREAMING IN THE PARK Ruffled feathers, a raucous jury of crows deliberate. A sacrificial cabbage, purples. A children's storybook takes flight. The intoxicating scent of fresh cut grass, a red tractor swirls upon a green ocean dream. - Marie Bortolotto © 2021 |
SPRINGTIME
Ah, what flashing and fragrance!
Ah, how the meadows laugh!
Ah, what aubades are heard!
FOLK BALAD
In my morning half-asleep, I am put out of sorts by a devilish squalling of little children. Finally, unable to sleep anymore, I jump out of bed in despair. Then, when I gaze at the countryside from my open window, I realize that the noisemakers were the birds.
I go out to the vegetable garden and I sing my thanks to the God of the blue day. A free concert of beaks, fresh and endless! Capriciously the swallow utters her ripply twittering in the well; the black bird whistles on the fallen orange, the fiery oriole chatters from one ilex to another; the greenfinch gives its long, frequent laughs at the top of the eucalyptus; and on the big pine the sparrows argue furiously.
What a morning! The sun poses its silver-and-gold cheerfulness on the earth; butterflies of a hundred colors play everywhere, among the flowers, through the house (now inside, now out), on the fountain. All over, the countryside opens up into crackings and creakings, into a boiling of healthy new life.
It's as if we were inside a huge honeycomb of light which was also the interior of and immense, flaming-hot rose.
Juan Ramon Jimenez, (from Platero y yo)
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A Centre You must hold your quiet center,
where you do what only you can do.
If others call you a maniac or a fool,
just let them wag their tongues.
If some praise your perseverance,
don't feel too happy about it—
only solitude is a lasting friend.
You must hold your distant center.
Don't move even if earth and heaven quake.
If others think you are insignificant,
that's because you haven't held on long enough.
As long as you stay put year after year,
eventually you will find a world
beginning to revolve around you. Ha Jin, Chinese-American Poet, Novelist |
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| Marie Bortolotto 2021 |
